Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Thoughts on single player experience

This is one of the best ideas I have heard so far.
Unfortuanatly the EE is to close to release that they will not change the main story any more, I guess.

By the way: What is source and what is the difference between normal magic and source magic? I have found a wiki but it is only about the games and not the world. D:OS is the only Larian game I played so far.

It's not very well explained (which is good). It's the unique thing that the Divinity universe has. In DivDiv it was basically healing magic and it wasn't explored further than that in the other games. If they had explored it in the way I said, the logical conclusion would've been that YOU (the player/s) are the Source; that's one hell of a gameplay and story interweaving example and quite the artistic statement and realization. The healing thing would be driven even further, you are actually fixing (healing) the problems of the universe by simply playing the games.

I have one good example for a similar thing:
Okami is a Zelda like game. Setting is the japanese mythology and the country has been consumed by darkness. You are the sun god Amaterasu in the shape of a white wolf and you have to restore the world. Often this is meant literally, so you can repair things or let plants grow. I like the game very much. There was only one question that bothered me: How can a wolf carry lots of weapons, potions and other items? (well, its a god )

New video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxgRf1DxyYQ (Part 2) @ 1:10:53 - explains a little more about the love and hate relationship with the companions.

Yes a companion can leave your party and can get aggressive towards you. You may start with only one character which I do not mind at all, as you get to replay the game with another origin which is a big win. I also know why allot of people like to start with a party at the beginning but Larian need to make it more sense when starting with those characters at the beginning of the game to the end. "Hey why are you in Jail with me? who are you? other party replies "I'm just a minion that helps you with your quest" THE END.

Though I am sure they said you will meet some companions in jail, and I can agree that when playing the second play through you may know where all the companions are at or already know their back stories with the same companions in jail. That is why I can see that people want to start with a party and get different journey with them instead of finding companions that you did not take or know more about in your first play through.

So yeah I can actually see both sides, though if we start with a party it need to make SENSE and choose which companions are with you that have back stories why they are in jail and so on. Who knows we might have companions or origins thats start from the jail and others you can find in the world (which may not have a origin at all). It's really confusing as Swen said that these companions have origins and playing multilayer they will all start in jail with you and they remove the companion from the world that have the same origin as you.

I know there are some people who would love to roleplay with themselves but I believe Swen say that you still can do that on the AMA reddit. I am more into the developing relationship system and I know most people would not love to roleplay each of the character and decides who gets the bacon or oops I have back stabbed myself...

So is Love&Hate (I am more about in between) will be worth it? Yes because for a better single player experience as you get to choose and make decisions within your party.

This is where things start to fall apart though. They are looking at it from the wrong end. We don't need a *system* for relationships, we need fully fleshed out companions who are their own people and work from there. Having a system like in DA:O is actually detrimental to the whole thing. They should naturally react to our surroundings and decisions which befits their character and the context.

What I was saying about the "developing relationship system" is I think what Larian wants for the Love&Hate stretch goal is that we can REACT or respond to their decisions or the choices you make throughout the game and develop more dialogue options with them. Which is "naturally" being able to react with them.

For example without that stretch goal, we might only hear their thoughts and their decisions but we cannot respond or just say yes or no. That is very natural which you are talking about and either way I do not mind as I agree that the companions must be fleshed out and react naturally in the game and I think that is what they are aiming for without the stretch goal and that was the system I was talking about.

Example that might be without the stretch goal: Gweyyn: "I hate you, you killed my brother" and the only respond you may have is "I will take my leave" - I just hope we have more dialogue options without the stretch goal.

OR she wont care when killing her brother at front of her, as it's just a NPC.

I think thats what they are actually aiming for with the relationship system especially when some origins can clash together. Though this is also confusing as you can be Gweyyn and kill your own family and your party reacted to do that, I think I just went to a whole different level with the relationship system.

So yeah I am not sure how they will be developing the Love&Hate but I think we have to wait for more info when the mod goal is reached and I am sure what you just suggest is what they are aiming to do without the stretch goal.

Ah, k. The word "system" wasn't really gelling with me and was bringing up unpleasant memories of Influence gained: Kaelyn the Dove +10 or Kreia disapproves -arbitrary points.

I totally agree with you.
I play KotoR2 again. There and in many other games (NWN2, DA:O, . . .) I feel the game forces you to play the mini game:

Guess what answers like your companions most.

If you guess wrong you reload and try again.

Dialogue should never be a mini game. Not for reputation (see examples above) and not for perks (like D:OS1) Dialogue choices must make sense in the context of this specific situation, including the reaction of companions with their own personality.

I think with the system I have seen in the videos they are on the right way. Your char has several tags, some from background, some from skills, some from you behaviour, some can change and some not. So you are human, noble, female, mage, cruel and deceptive.

This reminds me of PoE. While the system of PoE is not perfect, it is much better than many other things I have seen. It does have some problems however. You can be honest and deceptive at the same time and when you talk to somebody he likes you because you are known for being honest and in the next moment the same person dislikes you because you are known for being deceptive.

Regarding the beginning of D:OS2:
There are 100 people in a prison and 4 of them escape.
One of them is created by the player.
This means you can have 0 to 3 companions.

Does it mean that if you play single player, you can choose who escapes together with you and you have a selection of several companions to choose from? something like this:

you say: "Ok, I have arranged that we can hide in a box and somebody will smuggle the box out at night. There is only room for 4 people in the box. I take the human mage, the dwarf warrior and the elf archer with me. Sorry lizard priest and undead rogue, have a nice purging."

This does not really feel right. But if the game gives us a random selection of up to 3 chars ( of several pre made companions) this does not feel good either.

I do not have a god solution for this but I am not a writer for games.

Hmm interesting video. At 1:11:15 tokshen actually asks directly if it will be possible to create the full party as a single player, and the Larian employee actually can't answer if that will be in the game, so that sort of backtracks somewhat from Swen's answer in the Reddit AMA.
To be fair this interview is probably done before the AMA, so maybe they decided on it in between. Would be really nice with a complete description of all the different single player options though.

Nah, I don't think it will be like that. You will meet other companions outside of prison, they might or might not be Source-users (speculating). You won't choose your companions at the character creation screen :p You'll probably meet 1 optional companion that you can take with you in the prison or just leave alone. Still speculating, but that's how I'd do it.

All the companions are sourcerers, whom you escape with. The prototype being shown now has the party ending up on an island after being shipwrecked escaping from prison. I suppose there could be some distance between Fort Joy and the nearest port, but I don't imagine there would be a lot of sourcerer hangouts between the two, or there would be much selection of other sourcerers at the docks also fleeing the Divine Order's purges.

I'd guess it may work like the oldie Dungeon Master, where you indeed choose 3 characters to go along with you in a "prologue" kind of map, and you have time to review your choices.

A way to make a better experience out of it would be to be left rotting in the cell and have enough time to befriend the other potential characters. This "befriending" would be a kind of choice in disguise, but it would feel more natural and less "jerk" to make your daring escape with them.
"Befriending" is obviously a wild term, since you may end up fighting one another.

Anyway it would seem like a slightly more elegant solution in order to be able to choose your companions calmly, and avoid the ludonarrative dissonance ( I placed it! 10 points! ) of having to choose during a time-critical moment. "aaand what do you do ? Oh you cook? alright, you're in. You? You're a ventriloquist? hm. Let me check that guy, be right back." "Guys, huh, the guards are coming..." "yeah just a sec."

Another, sneaky system would be to actually have to choose them quickly because you don't have time enough. While you wouldn't be able to precisely choose the characters coming with you, the pseudo-randomness of the process sounds interesting, as you'd end up with a rag-tag team of people who do not trust each other. This may yield some surprises. Still I reckon most people wouldn't like that, especially in a tactical RPG. Forcing your players to do something quickly in real time wouldn't be a smart choice.

Ludonarrative dissonances that matter are mostly related to the game as a whole, not a moment-to-moment thing. They don't have a reason not to trust each other. Escaping from prison directly with the companions means all of you have the same motivation and goal, for the same reasons. That's not ripe for drama :p The other thing is that, if you don't encounter sourcerers "in the wild" that means they are all in Fort Joy. Which IS ripe for drama. But if you DO find some, then it begs the question why couldn't they have been a companion and avoid the menagerie of companions you *choose* from at the beginning, like choosing your pokemon starter :p

Oh, the example I mentionned was more in case the game urges you to choose fast because the guards are coming, but actually leaves you all the time in the world. It's a fairly commonly accepted thing in videogames that always bothered me. Fake feeling of urgency. Either make it real or don't do it !
I'm perfectly okay with escaping with a few companion of misfortune

By the way, and because I like off-topicing, one game that totally fits the description for the LND is probably the Last of Us. I never played a game that I found so frustrating : the girl loudly running everywhere or engaging in casual chatting during infiltration moments where silence is very important, pushing you out of the way to take your place ( I actually died once to that ), was a real immersion breaker. And since TLOU was supposed to be an immersice, ambience-based game, it was a clear deal breaker.

It's a mainstream game, that should tell you something of its immersion. Elie (or whatever her name was) was actually done so on purpose. We have to be able to differentiate between story and gameplay segregation, and LNDs. Elie was the former. Hope from FF13 was an LND. He was portrayed as weak, cowardly and useless, but he sprang into the fray whenever the characters were fighting.

I shall read more about LND then, as I'm not sure I see a difference between Hope and Ellie. They made Hope an acceptable combat companion but stuck a weakling personnality on him, which doesn't make sense ; Ellie is a vulnerable little girl whose lazy programming contradicts the game's main objective which is protecting her. Maybe the difference comes from the fact that Ellie's programming was done so because they tried to give her a realistic behaviour but failed, while for Hope they just disregarded the character's personnality and still purposefully made him a fighter ?
I'm quite interested in that LND thing, as I always try to analyze why I didn't like an otherwise popular media ( game or movie ), and this would give me another tool to understand ( although it only works for videogames ). That said, I've been sleeping 3h a night for the last three nights, so my braincells are kind of fried right now ! =)

Sorry, I have not played TLOU or any FF after 12.

Lacrymas, what is the difference between "story and gameplay segregation" and LND? As I have written before, I assume LND means that the game story wants you to do something but the game mechanics force you to do something else. An extreme example would be that the game tells you that you are the hero who tries to save the world and wants to help everyone, but the game encourages you to kill and plunder everything for exp and loot. In fact, D:OS1 does it a lot. You can steal everything and there are several situations where you get exp for solving something peacefully and then you kill them anyway for even more exp. I have never heard the term LND before and the wikipedia article in not very helpful.

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Dr Koin, I agree that the false urgency in many games is very annoying. Someone tells you: We are under attack by an army of orcs. You must come at once!" You agree, then you do 10 other quests, go shopping and you discuss with your companion the history of philosophy from stone age to post apocalyptic sci fi. Then you finally kill the orcs and save everyone.

D:OS has turn based combat (= slow) and Larian focuses on world exploration. This does not fit well with situations where you have to react fast in real time. There in a good example in Dragonfall. Terrorists place bombs in the sewers. When you enter the sewers (= start the quest) you have 10 turns to disarm 3 bombs. If you take too long it makes BOOM and its game over. It feels a bit strange that you run around and disarm bombs while terrorists shoot at you (you do not have the time to kill all of them first), but it does produce real urgency in a combat system very similar to D:OS.

The most important thing about LNDs is that they aren't avoidable. In D:OS you were portrayed as the heroes, but you weren't forced to do anything bad, so there's no LND there. Ellie was made in such a way as to not obstruct gameplay. She isn't ever attacked or heard by the NPCs during gameplay. LNDs usually happen when the writing is lazy and sloppy. It also depends on the context - you might be heroes but the story puts you in such a situation as to be unavoidable to do bad things. If done right that would be a great storytelling tool.

The sense of urgency can be written as such on purpose and can be used as a local climactic point. It separated by gameplay doesn't diminish its tension all that much, it only diminishes if you stay put on purpose and find out that it isn't all that urgent. I.e. perspective :p They can make it timed of course, but if they play their cards right it wouldn't be necessary.

Isn't the overriding goal to 'escape to lands controlled by the Black Ring'? That's a reason enough for other escaped Sourcerers to be traveling in the same direction.

I can see a way for some companions who didn't make it with you onto the boat or something to be in other areas of the game, especially past the first island. We haven't seen the escape sequence. We don't know how many companions are available to choose from the start (probably not that many, though. D:OS 1 only had 4, and two of those took several more months after release to add).

Maybe there's a second boat and ours just got unlucky and crashed. Who knows?


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Freedom and Urgency

As for a sense of urgency. I don't particularly care either way. A sense of urgency is great for creating tension and an atmosphere, but that is also at odds with exploration-based gameplay. D:OS is a game about freeform exploration, and putting urgent timers on everything would kill that part off. The boat with the Divine Magisters will arrive "tomorrow", but tomorrow will never come. It doesn't fit with the desired gameplay experience. Freedom and urgency are opposing forces in terms of gameplay.

You can only put a sense of urgency into D:OS by restricting or removing some of the freedom you get. The Luculla Mines are the key example. You lose the ability to travel or escape in a pretty arbitrary manner basically for the benefit of a two-minute or four-turn escape sequence. It was a little clunky.